http://cache.kotaku.com/assets/base/img/thumbs140x140/kotaku.com.png http://kotaku.com/tag/sports http://kotaku.com/tag/sports

UFC Undisputed tried to come back too soon. Following a breakout season in 2009, it returned with a good-but-not-great sequel in 2010. Publisher THQ recognized the franchise didn't deliver enough and shifted it to two-year production cycle. So is UFC Undisputed 3 the game mixed martial arts fans should have gotten last May? Or is it a title that can last them another two years? More »
]]> http://kotaku.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5885841&view=rss&microfeed=true

Today's Super Bowl between the Giants and the Patriots won't be much of a contest, if 1Up's simulation of 11 giants versus 11 Stormcloak patriots is any indication. Look for a lot of career-ending injuries late in the game. More »
]]> http://kotaku.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5882405&view=rss&microfeed=true

In past years I've used the Saturday before the Super Bowl to handicap the field for the next cover of Madden NFL. Since the last time I did that, EA Sports put the honors up to a fan-voted, 32-player tournament in 2011, and on Thursday announced it was doubling that field to 64 for 2012. More »
]]> http://kotaku.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5882320&view=rss&microfeed=true

Earlier this week, the official Madden NFL 12 simulation of Super Bowl XLVI took both the underdog and the under for the first time in the past nine years, calling the New York Giants as 27-24 winners over the New England Patriots. A simulation run on dearly departed Madden nemesis NFL 2K5 returned the opposite result. More »
]]> http://kotaku.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5882210&view=rss&microfeed=true

His season may be over, but Tebow Time has not run out. And if last night's news about the Madden NFL 13 cover is any indication, get ready to see a lot more of the Denver quarterback during the off-season. More »
]]> http://kotaku.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5882066&view=rss&microfeed=true

At Madden Bowl XVIII, EA Sports' Anthony Stevenson just announced that the cover athlete for Madden NFL will be voted on by fans for a second year. This year's field will be doubled to 64 candidates, and the first round of voting will be a "play-in" round pitting NFL teammates against each other to determine their franchise's representative in the second round through to the finals. More »
]]> http://kotaku.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5881879&view=rss&microfeed=true

Wishful thinking is a common theme with conceptual EA Sports game covers; usually the artist is honoring a favorite player or another star he wishes would be anointed for cover recognition. Entirely imaginary titles, as conceived here by an artist and posted on Behance, are a little less common. No NCAA Lacrosse title by EA Sports exists and odds aren't good that it will anytime soon. More »
]]> http://kotaku.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5881493&view=rss&microfeed=true

Four teams of all-star competitors, including three Heisman Trophy winners (in their video game personae, above) and two Pro Football Hall of Famers, clash tonight in the Madden Bowl, the annual pre-Super Bowl throwdown EA Sports has staged for nearly 20 years. You can watch the action on ESPN3, which means if you have an Xbox 360, you can probably watch it on that. More »
]]> http://kotaku.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5881712&view=rss&microfeed=true

The New York Giants will claim their fourth Super Bowl title on Sunday, according to EA Sports' official Madden NFL 12 simulation, which has New York defeating New England 27-24 on a 40-yard field goal as time expires. More »
]]> http://kotaku.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5880393&view=rss&microfeed=true

At first blush it doesn't seem to stand out: NBA 2K11 cracked the top 20 of most played titles on the Xbox 360 for the week of Jan. 16. But when you peel it back, that's actually quite astonishing, to see an old version of a sports video game resurface more than 15 months after its release. More »
]]> http://kotaku.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5879743&view=rss&microfeed=true

Of all ironies, it's Electronic Arts now asking a judge to rule that some video game depictions of real-life names and symbols and products don't need a license. More »
]]> http://kotaku.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5878160&view=rss&microfeed=true

The Facebook games giant Zynga seems to have its eyes on a suite of sports titles now, registering several web sites that point to both a football game in the works and an umbrella brand called "Zynga Sports," reports domain registry watchdog Fusible. More »
]]> http://kotaku.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5878115&view=rss&microfeed=true

Major League Baseball 2K12 is widely expected to be in its walk year, the final season of a fat contract going back to 2005. Unlike a superstar in the big leagues, this is not a cause for optimism that fans will see an above-average performance. Not when the performer is the one paying the contract, and not when it has been notoriously inconsistent despite having the Xbox 360 all to itself. More »
]]> http://kotaku.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5878072&view=rss&microfeed=true

You may not know this, but my old man is a tennis umpire. He's done it for more than 25 years, which means he's had some pretty big assignments. Dad's worked two Olympics, numerous U.S. Opens (including lines crew of the most recent men's final), and has been called a fucking chickenshit bastard by John McEnroe himself. More »
]]> http://kotaku.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5877771&view=rss&microfeed=true

Pushed from a January release to Valentine's Day, the flagship MMA title UFC Undisputed 3 said today its demo will release Jan. 24 or, a week from this past Tuesday. More »
]]> http://kotaku.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5877756&view=rss&microfeed=true

Boston first sacker Adrian Gonzalez holds down the box shot of MLB 12 The Show from Sony, breaking the two-year hold of Minnesota's Joe Mauer. Before Mauer, the last cover star for Sony's boutique baseball franchise was also a Red Sox, Dustin Pedroia, for MLB 09 The Show. Before him, it was Philadelphia's Ryan Howard. More »
]]> http://kotaku.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5877733&view=rss&microfeed=true

So much is made of NFL 2K5 and the blaze-of-glory conclusion to its rivalry with Madden NFL that it's easy to forget another title once threatened EA Sports' glamour franchise. In fact, the Madden team also feared NFL GameDay until the end. More »
]]> http://kotaku.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5877712&view=rss&microfeed=true

Four months ago, EA Sports opened up applications for a four-month fellowship meant to invite former college athletes into video game design careers. Today, the label awarded its first two, to graduates who played football at Colorado State University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. More »
]]> http://kotaku.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5877413&view=rss&microfeed=true

Finish off the "Blitz Gauntlet" mode in the recently released NFL Blitz for PS3 and Xbox 360 and you'll unlock a team full of zombies. And the logo on their jersey isn't that of the National Football League, but of another league, one from a future of decaying flesh and dismembered bodies. More »
]]> http://kotaku.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5877364&view=rss&microfeed=true

EA Sports has confirmed to Kotaku that NBA Jam: On Fire Edition will be getting a roster update. The publisher's preceding silence on the subject had led some to believe it had abandoned post-release support for the 2-on-2 arcade basketball game. More »
]]> http://kotaku.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5876875&view=rss&microfeed=true

I've tried to be open-minded about what constitutes a sports video game, largely because the genre has so few new titles or competing products in a given year. Pinball FX 2, one of my favorite games of 2011, has struck me as a quasi-sports video game for a while, I just couldn't really articulate why. More »
]]> http://kotaku.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5873998&view=rss&microfeed=true

A long-forgotten truth of NFL Blitz revealed itself to me as I looked to salt away my first victory: You don't salt away any victories in NFL Blitz. You want a time-consuming play? Unload a deep pass route, like the fondly remembered "Da Bomb." More »
]]> http://kotaku.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5873180&view=rss&microfeed=true

Looking back on the list of video games I finished in 2011, it's an embarrassingly thin roster. It may be my least productive year ever, in terms of what I finished, what I was expected to play, and what I spent most of my time doing. It's not a resume that really speaks of a professional video game writer. More »
]]> http://kotaku.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5872278&view=rss&microfeed=true

Adam Larson, the artist behind the three custom covers for NBA 2K12, has also supplied the base art of the Detroit Tigers pitcher Justin Verlander for the cover of MLB 2K12. More »
]]> http://kotaku.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5871770&view=rss&microfeed=true

A walk-on running back; a dad who couldn't tell his kids what he did; a fat kid who started going to the gym and never stopped. A guy who came to know his sport's greatest venue in ways some champions never will. The top man at sports video gaming's dominant publisher, and a college student who considers himself a "virtual athlete," watching every out from his wheelchair. More »
]]> http://kotaku.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5871023&view=rss&microfeed=true

Pro basketball resumes on Christmas Day; college football will begin staging its major postseason contests eight days later. This has, perhaps unintentionally, engendered competing five-game simulations from 2K Sports and EA Sports, makers of NBA 2K12 and NCAA Football 12. Want to know who wins the big matchups? We've got the results predicted by these two video games, with highlights! More »
]]> http://kotaku.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5870622&view=rss&microfeed=true

Free agent signings are big news in sports video games, not just the leagues they simulate. Today, EA Sports picked up Kolbe Launchbaugh, a senior designer for Sony's universally acclaimed MLB The Show baseball simulation, and he'll start work on EA Sports' cornerstone Madden franchise in a couple of weeks. More »
]]> http://kotaku.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5870669&view=rss&microfeed=true

EA Sports, which ended publication of Madden NFL for the PC in 2008, evidently had plans to return to that platform through a browser-based game sometime in 2010, according to mockups created by a former staff designer. The label was serious enough about the project to build a working, mouse-driven interface for the game's console engine. More »
]]> http://kotaku.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5870311&view=rss&microfeed=true

It doesn't involve a realistic roster or league licensing, so it's sometimes hard to remember that SSX is an EA Sports title. And the snowboarding reboot should be one of the bigger ones for the label in the coming year. But with a lineup crowded by more traditional fare in the first two months, SSX has seen its ship date move once and now twice, thanks to NFL and tennis products. More »
]]> http://kotaku.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5870302&view=rss&microfeed=true

You know Owen's 2011 Sports Game of the Year awards? Throw 'em out. Straight out the window. Because now, at the 11th hour, we have a game that bests them all. More »
]]> http://kotaku.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5869609&view=rss&microfeed=true

Chet Holzbauer can't remember any other gift from that mad Christmas Day scramble 20 years ago. As far as he knows, the cacophony of torn paper came to a stop, like the needle coming off a record, when he and his brother unwrapped Tecmo Super Bowl. More »
]]> http://kotaku.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5869077&view=rss&microfeed=true

For the past two years, Stick Jockey has, at the end of the season, used EA Sports' NCAA Football to supply an alternate-reality simulation of a postseason involving a true college football playoff, one that invites every conference champion. I've become resigned to the utter fantasy of this idea ever happening in my lifetime. More »
]]> http://kotaku.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5866937&view=rss&microfeed=true

With the NBA set to get back to work on Christmas, NBA 2K12 can start bringing in rookies who were drafted in June but went unsigned throughout the league's lockout. More »
]]> http://kotaku.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5866855&view=rss&microfeed=true

Competitive Madden gaming, for the better part of a decade, typically involved a weekend of long drives, cheap hotel stays, and lots of standing, sitting and sometimes sleeping on ugly convention center carpet. It fairly assured that only the diehards and elites would show up for preliminary rounds. More »
]]> http://kotaku.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5866530&view=rss&microfeed=true

I had high hopes when EA Sports hinted a couple months ago that "figures recognizable to the sports world" would be playable golfers in Tiger Woods PGA Tour 13, due in March. That kind of longhand comment, as opposed to just saying "former sports stars" had me thinking the game might include some kind of celebrity pro-am event. More »
]]> http://kotaku.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5866157&view=rss&microfeed=true

In Los Angeles six months ago, Erick Boenisch gave me my first look at NBA 2K12. I think I watched about a quarter of play in it, with no additional commentary or guidance. He just wanted me to see that it was a good-looking game, and indeed it was. My first question had nothing to do with that, though. It was about the NBA lockout—which at that time hadn't even begun. More »
]]> http://kotaku.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5864826&view=rss&microfeed=true

A company that supplies 3D mapping technology for games like Call of Duty and Assassin's Creed saw a £3 million drop in its profits this year, and blamed the fact it spent way too much time animating a bunch of dumbass superheroes Stan Lee thought up for the National Hockey League. More »
]]> http://kotaku.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5864792&view=rss&microfeed=true

We may be closing out the hype cycle for 2011, but that means 2012's is already underway. SSX is still looking hawt for its Feb. 14 release, as this ski-porn gallery attests. Happy early Valentine's Day. More »
]]> http://kotaku.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5864735&view=rss&microfeed=true

An NBA-branded augmented-reality game released today for Android and iOS devices, promises to make you the King of the Court at any number of real-world basketball locations around you. So far I'm the King of a neighboring cul-de sac and a Wendy's parking lot. More »
]]> http://kotaku.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5864360&view=rss&microfeed=true

Though not a retail release, the January reboot of NFL Blitz will still have a cover star, following a fan-voted campaign taking place during the Spike Video Game Awards next weekend. More »
]]> http://kotaku.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5864357&view=rss&microfeed=true